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Balassa-Samuelson and Wage, Price and Unemployment Dynamics in the Spanish Transition to EMU Membership [Dataset]

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Balassa-Samuelson and Wage, Price and Unemployment Dynamics in the Spanish Transition to EMU Membership [Dataset]
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/90RUT5
 
Creator Katarina Juselius
Javier Ordóñez
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description This paper provides an empirical investigation of the wage, price and unemployment
dynamics that have taken place in Spain during the last two decades. The aim of this
paper is to shed light on the impact of the European economic integration on Spanish
labour market and the convergence to a European level of prosperity. We found that
the Balassa-Samuelson effect, product market competition, and capital liberalization
have been the main driving forces in this period. The adjustment dynamics show that
Spanish inflation has adjusted in the long run to the European purchasi
ng power parity
level (as measured by the German price level) corrected for the Balassa-Samuelson
effect. In the medium run this long-run convergence was achieved by two types of
Phillips curve mechanisms; one where the inflation/unemployment trade-off was
triggered off for different levels of the interest rate and real wage costs, another one
where the trade-off was a function of the real exchange rate and the interest rate.
Excess wages and/or increasing cost levels in the tradable secto
r led to higher
unemployment rather than higher prices. Thus, much of the burden of adjustment was
carried by unemployment in this period.
 
Subject Balassa-Samuelson effect
Nominal and real convergence
Unemployment dynamics
Purchasing power parity
Cointegrated VAR
 
Date 2009
 
Type aggregate data